In the last century, countries that experienced the baptism of World War I and World War II understood that for any country, air defense is the top priority, otherwise its own airspace will become the home of the enemy country to slaughter itself. In particular, the United States and the Soviet Union, which had experienced missile competitions, attached great importance to air defense. Just like the Soviet Union, it has maintained the myth of unbreakable air defense for decades.
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was experiencing chronic death, and any disturbance could lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union overnight, so why was there a sudden earthquake in the Soviet bureaucracy, and the highest-level officials such as the minister of defense and the commander-in-chief of air defense were dismissed overnight?
This is actually related to the myth that the Soviet Air Defense is unbreakable, specifically that this myth was broken, and it was "single-handedly" broken by an unknown young man. What did this young man do at that time that would embarrass the Soviet Union to remove high-level officials regardless of the political situation?
The young man was Matthias Rust, an amateur pilot in Hamburg, Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Although Rusta obtained a flying license at the age of 15, the total length of her flight was only 40 hours. This kind of flying experience, not to mention compared with professional pilots, Rust is not even as good as the vast majority of amateur pilots.
But it was this "amateur pilot", the 19-year-old West German youth who had only 40 hours of flying experience, who single-handedly "single-handedly" the entire Soviet air defense network.
Travel back in time to 1987, when Rust was young and promising, betting with his partner that he would be recorded in flight history because he would be a pilot landing at the Arc de Triomphe or Red Square in the Soviet Union. At the time, everyone thought it was just a joke by Rust, and no one took it seriously.
But what they don't know is that Rust is more than just talking. In May of that year, Rusta, through a friend, bought two Soviet route maps at great expense and carefully studied the loopholes in Soviet aviation. At the same time, Rust rented an American-made aircraft and dismantled a large number of useless accessories himself, and the free space was equipped with a secondary fuel tank.
Rust then began a long-range flight, initially from the city of Hamburg to the capital of Iceland and finally to the capital of Finland. According to the flight plan, Rust was supposed to travel from the Finnish capital to the Swedish capital at this time, but just 10 minutes after take-off, Rust changed his plans.
Rust, who had changed his plans, flew his modified aircraft toward the Soviet Union, and in order to hide himself, Rusta lowered the flight altitude to a minimum. Such an operation also succeeded in making Rust's plane disappear from Finnish radar. At this time, the Finnish air traffic control thought that Rust's plane had crashed, and did not realize Rust's madness at all.
Entering the vicinity of Soviet airspace, Rust lowered his flight altitude to 30 meters and headed for Moscow along the Soviet railway. During the 5-hour flight, Rust passed several Soviet military bases and missile bases and successfully landed on Red Square in the Soviet Union.
Rust's arrest on Red Square caused an uproar in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet top brass met overnight to remove the defense minister and the commander-in-chief of air defense, while demanding that the Soviet Union strengthen low-altitude defenses. However, such a remedy could not hide the embarrassment of Soviet air defense being "singled out" by West German youth.